I haven’t done a thing with PvP since the early days of WoD, and so I was entirely unfamiliar with the fact that there was any PvP gear available (because I just didn’t care, didn’t have time, etc.: My experience with Ashran in early WoD left me so unimpressed that for the first time since Burning Crusade, I failed to enter a battleground or care about PvP for the entirety of an expansion.)

I know I’m late to the party. Due to real life situations, WoD was like the lost xpac for me. So my knowledge is lacking in some ways. But, I figured, “I’ve got a few of these Honor/Conquest thingies you can get from doing garrison missions… maybe I can use them to grab some modest upgrades for my druid.”

So I bought myself a solid Conquest trinket upgrade, and then I started looking at how to use the remainder of my currency. I picked up a ring upgrade, and then decided to check out the chest pieces.

The Season 2 chest was “Wild Gladiator’s Tunic.” Mind you, that’s tunic. T-U-N-I-C. Those links take you to generally accepted definitions of “tunic.” Usually covers your chest and waist, and so on.

Meanwhile, here’s that picture, again, of Blizzard’s definition of a tunic:

It’s a fucking bra!

For un-funny giggles, I checked the Season 3 version, “Warmongering Gladiator’s Tunic.” It wasn’t much better:

Hmm… oh, wait-

IT’S A FUCKING BRA!!**

**My reaction had me thinking of this video, in which Lars Ulrich of Metallica reacts to the ridiculousness of Jason Newsted leaving the band and then leaving butt-hurt messages about the band not paying attention to his messages, demands, and angry tirades. He sort of snaps and goes off for a minute. After I came down from yelling, “IT’S A FUCKING BRA!” at my screen about 15 times, I started laughing when I thought of this..

(I know it’s not a perfect one-to-one analogy, but it’s kind of how I felt. In a different way…)

Anyway…

Then, just for comparison, I checked the alternate Season 3 choice, the “Chestguard.” Which… actually covers.

Oh, hey, a chestguard.

Still, though… a tunic is not a bra! Look it up, you tone-deaf dev-people! I even provided links before the damn screenshots, so you don’t even have to type anything.

Sheesh.

Anyway… ultimately, none of them looked cool in the slightest, and there was no question that I was going to transmog the shit out of whichever piece I bought. So I bought the Season 3 “tunic” (Pfah! I can’t even accept that it’s called that..) along with a couple of other bits, and I did, indeed, transmog everything back to my idea of what a normal, respectable, ancient night elf druid would wear into battle.

Or, around town, for that matter.

***

It’s been a while since I stuck my beak into the argument against this kind of crap. But it seems like not much has changed in the couple of years since I made whatever contributions I made toward the conversation. But really, Blizz? In an expansion setting including a place like the wilds of The Everbloom, you can’t have a more druid-y, plant-y, robe-y “tunic” for us to wear in PvP? You have to go the ‘basically underwear’ route?

In Tallhide garb with Keepers of Time tabard: a potential throwback transmog.

Late last month, I mentioned a plan to abandon my recent “habit” of reaching the level cap with all deliberate speed at the beginning of an expansion, when Warlords of Draenor arrives. Since then, I’ve been putting more thought into this idea.

In previous expansions, the “race to max-level” generally involved playing through a zone until I reached the next level and could go on to the next zone, skipping the rest of the content until a later date. Higher-level zones equal more experience, after all. My first toon through the leveling gauntlet has historically been geared to the teeth (to whatever extent that toon had raided in the previous expansion), blew through the opening levels, and powered through the final zones in order to get started on daily quests and heroic dungeons. Later on, in moments of down time, those other zones were finished in order to complete achievements or get started on reputation grinds.

Having done just that in Mists of Pandaria, I found myself with plenty to do, but no reason to have done it so quickly. It took my guild more than a month after I reached 90 to start raiding, and that left me with LFR, dailies, the legendary quest grind, and so on. I spent way too much time being antsy to raid, frustrated with guild-mates and fretting over our inability to get ten people together in what I considered to be a reasonable amount of time.

With what has happened over the past year-plus, my perspective on the experience has changed. While I’m looking forward to WoD, I’m not going to hold my breath that people will come together quickly at level 100 – nor will I race to be first to that point myself.

. . .

With that changed perspective, I find myself looking forward to jumping into WoD with more of an interest in the story taking place on the ground. I used to be guildmates with a couple who level together at the beginning of each xpac, completing each zone as they go. While that approach didn’t resonate with me at the time – not because I didn’t understand the attraction of leveling that way, but because it seemed like a less efficient way to gear for raiding* – I find myself looking back with envy and regret that I didn’t approach things that way at the beginning of Mists. So this time I’ll probably go about it that way.

*And there’s my old tunnel vision, coming back to repeatedly bite me in the ass…

The old way: geared to the teeth, overpower early content, build to better gear, power through the end zones. Gear up. Raid.

The new (for me) way: Play the story. Enjoy the journey, because once it’s over, it’s over for that toon – and that first toon gets to see it when it’s brand new. Take your time, read the quests, relax and have fun. Worry about raiding when you get to that point, and not before.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

. . .

But what about the gear?

As it stands, if I never raided SoO again, my ilvl going into The Squish would be 563**, including the Legendary cloak, great weapon (not the Garrosh heirloom – more on that later – but still very good), CD-reducing trinket, and so on. Even if I hit the ground walking, so to speak, I’m still going to be able to handle enemy mobs with little thought in such gear. This, of course, contributes to blowing through quests, which contributes to faster leveling and forgetting why I’m there.

I’m actually considering downgrading my gear for Warlords of Draenor, in order to somewhat level the playing field between Mushan and Mushan’s enemies (which will presumably be numerous…).

At first, I thought about replacing it with gear one can purchase from the likes of Trader Zambeezi, but that gear is ilvl 372, which is essentially level 85 gear, so that’s out of the picture. I don’t really feel like hitting level-91 mobs with level 85 gear – this route I’m considering isn’t intended to be a semi-Ironman, extreme soloing adventure. So then I thought, what if I spend the next few months farming heroic dungeon gear? If I could put a full set of that gold-ish looking stuff together (and transmog the crap out of it, of course, because, seriously… that gear does not look becoming on a night elf), it would make WoD a real adventure at the beginning, methinks. And I already have Tempestuous Longbow in the bank, so worrying about a weapon would be a non-issue.

Then again, despite my earlier professions of love for the dungeons we can choose to run nowadays, I am getting pretty sick of them, in all honesty. I’m not sure I could stomach farming them for some hare-brained scheme now that the flow of new gear has stopped and I haven’t needed Valor Points in a while.

My other thought was something a little more interesting and easy: a full set of gear from the Timeless Isle. I made a set for transmog purposes a while ago (although I don’t think I can wear it in all seriousness… I was just checking it out at the time), and of those pieces there are two that have two whole secondary stats per item. However, I have a bunch of unmade pieces sitting on an alt, and I figure that since I’ll probably farm Ordon b-holes at some point until I get to Exalted with Shaohao on Mushan, I’m likely to get more.

Once 6.0 drops pre-xpac, with The Squish and stat/gear/enchant/gem changes in effect, I can make all the pieces until I get serviceable ones (“or die tryin'”). I can combine 496 Discipline of Xuen with my Darkmoon Trinket – 484 Relic of Xuen*** – to fill the trinket slots with all kinds of Xuen… and I can use my 491 Sha-touched weapon. I have an absolutely sick number of Timeless cloak tokens, and a few rings, so I think I can make do with this kind of strategy. I just don’t know if it’s enough… ah, who am I kidding? All things being relative, this set would be way weaker than what I’m wearing now, but would still be “last-xpac-current” enough that I would feel competent.

***Due to bag space concerns, I’ve deleted so much gear this xpac… it’s kind of sad. But I did keep the Relic. For some reason, I have a hard time deleting Darkmoon trinkets. I didn’t delete Greatness for a long time, and kept Hurricane until sometime after I was deeply involved in the Pandaria campaign.

This is, of course, assuming that The Squish won’t diminish the relative power gap between SoO gear and Timeless gear. I’m assuming that it won’t.

. . .

You may ask, And what about that heirloom bow?

In all honesty, at this point, if I never get the bow, I don’t think I’ll care. In addition to the fact that I feel less and less inclined to care much about killing Garrosh, the heirloom bow would work against what I’m thinking of doing anyway.

OK, how about the Legendary cloak?

This is where I pause…

…because one of the things that interests me is how far I’ll go into the mid-90s or later before my first and only legendary becomes irrelevant. I’ve never, ever had one before. So I’m torn. I may just keep the cloak equipped, for fun and for pride. Removing all set bonuses/CD-reduction gear and the rest of the current raid gear will be a massive self-nerf as it is, and would likely put me exactly where I want to be, which is not overpowered vs. the first couple levels of mobs on Draenor.

. . .

As shown in the screenshot at the top, I’m also looking at going in with a nostalgic look via transmog. I’ve spent so much time leveling alts through places like Nagrand that I thought it might be fun to wear this simple Tallhide Mail set for that throwback feeling. I wore the Gryphon Mail set for most of MoP, although for the past several weeks I’ve been rocking a T7 Cryptstalker set, which reflects my (recent) darker mood regarding the game while also looking like I mean business.

A small part of me thinks that going into Draenor wearing something that looks badass would be more appropriate in the larger scheme, given that we’re chasing after a warmonger who doesn’t know when to quit. However, on a personal level, I’m intentionally entering WoD not as an end-game raider, but as (possibly) a Timeless Isle-equipped adventurer who will get caught up in events that, as usual, I wasn’t (supposed to be) expecting. Thus, a simple transmog like this – tied to so many memories of picking up Tallhide BoEs in Nagrand – lends somewhat to the immersion level, given what I’m going for.

. . .

So, what do you think? Full Timeless? Heroic dungeon gear? Is there a better idea that would make what I’m aiming for more interesting?

Or do you think the whole notion is preposterous and stupid? I think it could be fun and challenging, but maybe you think I’m off my rocker.

One thing that I’m well aware of is that, like previous expansions, it’s likely that I’ll replace this gear as I go through the campaign in WoD. That’s ok. Like I said, I don’t necessarily want to make this into an Ironman thing, where I’m fighting a constant uphill battle while being massively undergeared. I’m just looking for a different experience, and upgrading from, say, a Timeless-dominated set with quest greens and dungeon blues from Draenor will be a more natural extension of that, as opposed to wearing all of my current gear until 94 or so (and wondering if I’ll ever really be challenged).

Preface: Laeleiweyn suggested recently that we altoholics could collectively celebrate alts, either on blogs, Twitter, or by starting/playing them in-game, over the course of eleven weeks starting on August 19th, and ending November 3rd. Each week will be themed by class – week one for DKs, week two for druids, week three for hunters, etc.

It’s a fantastic idea, although I do not have an alt for every class. However, I do have several alts, so I plan on participating by writing posts on the classes I do have. Week one is Death Knight Week.

…

I have a long and un-storied history of not playing death knights.

I made a death knight shortly after Wrath dropped, played through the starting zone, got myself drafted into the Alliance. I got him up to level 62, and was working through Hellfire Peninsula, smashing enemies like they were made of papier-mâché. My death knight was freakin’ awesome.

Yet, for some reason, I let him lie dormant for several months. And when I came back to him, I found that the class confused me, and he wasn’t as powerful as he had been, and I didn’t like him any more. Soon after that, he became a victim of the dreaded Delete button, and was no more. This was sometime in 2009.

Thus began the long and empty saga of not playing a DK.

Between that death knight and 2013, I killed Anub’arak, the Lich King, Ragnaros, Deathwing, took a laxative in Grizzly Hills seven or eight times, watched Thrall get married, ate some Red Bean Bun, and did many, many, many other things, both in-game and in real-life. Death knights weren’t really on my radar for a long time.

However, in Mists of Pandaria I came to a point where I began to want to play one again. Perhaps it was the memory of that epic finish to the starting zone; or a small fascination with the mechanics of playing a DK tank, as compared to a warrior; or a desire to figure out how the runic system worked. Whatever it was, I started a new DK several months ago.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to:

Saldrahn, with some classic DK transmog action goin’ on!

If someone had told me a year ago that I would make and level a DK to 90, I would have laughed and shrugged that prediction aside. I really didn’t think it would ever happen.

From any type of end-game standpoint, there was no need for this toon. I made him purely for fun… and boy, was he fun to level! I leveled as Blood, and had an awesome time. I guess you’re supposed to level DKs as Frost, but I’m getting to be fairly experienced at leveling tanks, so I went with it. I leveled him casually: if there was a time when I was bored or tired of Pandaria or the Barrens, I could log in and rip some face on my DK for a while.

I’m still learning how to play him. I haven’t really read up on the runic system, so I’m still in the process of figuring out how it works, how to use Death Runes properly, and so on. I haven’t tanked any instances with him yet. That wasn’t something that I was interested in while I leveled – I just relaxed and had fun and didn’t really worry about interacting with others most of the time while I was leveling. So there are areas where I have a lot to learn, and his UI is a bit of a mess right now, and so on… but I hope to start using him to tank some dungeons before the end of the expansion, just to see how that goes.

On a side note, I finally leveled an engineer to max-skill for the first time. Saldrahn is that engineer. So I picked this achievement up, the same day I hit 90:

Master of All!

That was another thing I never saw happening! Leveling engineering can be a frustrating process, for certain.

…

My DK is a toon that I leveled for fun, and it was totally worth it. It still slightly surprises me that he even exists, much less that he’s at max-level. However, he’s here now, and I look forward to more adventures with him in the future!

…

Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!

Due to the makeup of our raid team, I’ve usually been tasked with bringing Aloysius the Sporebat for the billion damage to bosses in their man-parts spell haste buff. On rarer rogue-less/dk-less occasions, I’ve used Dimples the Hyena. And on one super-rare occasion, where we had no mage (and we never run with a windwalker or cat/bear druid), I got to bring along my old friend Basil the Wolf.

Well, last night – for what was quite possibly the first time in all of my normal mode raiding* for this expansion – I summoned the rarely seen but still mighty-as-time frostsaber, Kharta…

Kharta the Frostsaber!

…and for a brief moment, it was like old times. I raided with him quite a bit more in Cataclysm, before cats were reduced to bringing the mastery buff. It may fit, lore-wise, I suppose… but with all of the paladins and shaman out there, giving mastery to cats was a giant kick in the balls to both cats and 10-man raiding hunters all around the world of Warcraft. It’s a crime and a damn shame, and I’ll stick to that story till they change it, which will probably be never.

*LFR doesn’t count, and I usually bring Dimples in LFR anyway, because I figure that if all of the rogues/dks/other hyenas (yeah, like people actually choose to use hyenas in LFR haHAHahahaha…) die, I’ll still have a haste buff.

So what’s so special about Kharta? Nothing other than these two cold hard facts: he looks awesome, and he is awesome. He’s not an exotic – I tamed him (along with two or three other cats) back when I was doing the Frostsaber Trainers dailies in Winterspring during Cataclysm, and he became my favorite pet. I like how he looks with my hunter, too – the bits of purple trim on my Gryphon Mail and his frosty purple glow are very complementary, in my opinion.

And of course, I have a matching mount for him, too!

Hopefully, I’ll have more opportunities to raid with Kharta, even if, like last night, it’s simply because all of the buffs that I could bring are covered by the rest of the raid. It’s not as if raiding without him is ruining my raid experience – at this point, I’ve even become somewhat fond of Aloysius and Dimples – but there’s nothing quite like an awesome cat at the side of a night elf hunter.

…

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The news came down last night: Activision Blizzard and a group of investors led by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has bought out Vivendi’s 60% controlling interest for $8 billion.

From Game Informer (because I usually go to them first, for whatever reason):

$5.83 billion dollars of the buyout will come from Activision, while another $2.34 billion will come from a group of investors led by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and co-chairman Brian Kelly. The pair have put a combined $100 million of their own funds behind the purchase. Tencent, which owns 40 percent of Epic Games is part of this group.

This is huge. As the situation stood, Vivendi (aka Soulless Conglomerate) was perfectly willing to extract huge sums of cash from one of its few profitable / well-run subsidiaries by declaring a dividend to their benefit, forcing Activision to take on massive debt in the process. As GI puts it, Activision Blizzard was likely to be bled dry over time by Vivendi’s self-serving financial moves.

As such, and for fans of Blizzard games, this is great news. It was still a huge price to pay for its independence, and so Activision Blizzard will of course still be striving to make great products in order to cover debt and turn a profit. However, there isn’t a gauntlet hanging over the company’s neck like there would have been if Vivendi had indeed saddled AB with mounds of debt and then cast them off.

But what does this mean for the future?

I am not an expert in anything, but to my way of thinking, it means more of “the same.” By that, I mean that we’ll continue to see Activision run in a fiscally conservative manner, investing in high-upside IPs like Destiny and Call of Duty. Blizzard, meanwhile, will continue to develop content for Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Hearthstone, and whatever Titan turns out to be.

Player cost models will not change abruptly, but will continue to evolve over time. This means that the subscription model (which people have been predicting the death of for almost half a decade) for WoW will continue to be in place for a while, since, even at the recently announced “new low” of 7.7 million subscribers, that represents at least $100 million in revenue per month on subs alone. Subscription details could change in the future, however, as Blizzard tries to both facilitate new player growth and retain current players.

The in-game store will become a world (of Warcraft)-wide reality, and real-money vanity items will become more common. The much-talked-about introduction of transmog helms is just the beginning; we’re careening toward a shift in what the “pet store” is all about. Whereas it has, in times B.H. (“before helms“), seemed that each new item in the store was a special thing that many people “had to have,” we’ll soon be in a place where there is so much content on the store that even die-hard fans will have to choose between which items are “have to buy” and which are not (we’re already seeing this with the helms). At some point – particularly with transmog items and the like – there will be many options on the store that will be redundant (“I like the red helm, it looks awesome with my gear, so I will buy that one, and skip the blue one,” etc.). Considering this, I wonder how soon diminishing returns will come into play… I suppose we’ll see as it happens.

At any rate, microtransactions in WoW are here to stay, and the only unknowns are “how much / what kinds of content will they make available?” and “how soon will they be?” Given the modern gaming climate, this is hardly surprising or unforeseen. Activision Blizzard has traded an uncertain debt future (bled dry by Vivendi) for a certain debt future (controlled, responsible debt, as has been Activision’s strategy for a long time now). It is still a business, however, and will always strive to be a profitable one. However, unlike the subscription (which is currently a necessary expense for players wanting to play the full game), the store will remain completely optional for the foreseeable future: transmog items, pets and mounts, etc.

As The Godmother has said (and I paraphrase here), Blizzard has always made end-game progress a measure of gameplay, rather than dollars spent – and when that changes, it will be the end of World of Warcraft. As long as that integrity to gameplay is there on Blizzard’s part – and history shows that is a good bet – players will always ultimately have a choice when it comes to “which / whether to buy” from the store. And that is a good thing.

I’m excited about this news. Activision Blizzard has wrested its creative and financial future from the clutches of a corporate hell, and that is good news for all players who love its games.

…

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My scope of “reading everything on the internets” is probably somewhat lacking, because one only has so many hours in the day for one’s hobby. However, amid all of the discussion that I’ve seen in recent days regarding the Elixir of Wisdom, the newly-announced transmog helms coming to the Pet Store (sic), and “the sky is falling”/”FTP is just over the next hill”, there seems to be a false reading of where this movement is coming from – and to my understanding, this misinterpretation goes to the root of just what Blizzard is.

For those not in the know, Blizzard is not simply “BLIZZARD, gods of video games and money, deciders of everything, the end.”

In fact, Blizzard, or “Activision Blizzard” – as they’re known to the general gaming community – isn’t even just Activision Blizzard, one of the largest (if not the largest) video game companies in the world. Rather, Activision Blizzard is one cog in an international mass media conglomerate called Vivendi, which owns a 61% stake (controlling interest) in Activision Blizzard.

Vivendi, based in France, has its hands in several telecommunications companies, music (Universal, which owns roughly 30% of the music industry market share), video games (Blizz), mobile service, and film. Activision Blizzard is therefore just a part, albeit an important one, of this massive company.

It’s funny what gets edited out of what’s front and center for us. Obviously, on the player level, the games themselves are most important, and then we’re often interested in the development, refinement, and evolution of those games. Finally, focus for gamers generally ends at the Blizzard-level, where our final judgments (“they made a great game!” or “they’re money-grubbing corporate tools!” etc.) are made. This is generally all that anyone needs to know – this is just gaming, right?

Well, for purposes of discussions regarding how much of our money Blizzard is looking to pocket and in what manner they will try to do so, I think it’s important not to forget about the Vivendi thing. Because the corporate ladder goes higher than you may think. Vivendi’s financial struggles, which seem to be akin to one man whose mission is to juggle ten elephants at once without ever letting one touch the ground, could have more to do with Blizzard’s (and Activision’s, for that matter) increased interest in making more digital booty available for your hard-earned cash than any other factor. From Game Informer (via Financial Times, via Reuters) from last Monday (July 8th):

According to the Financial Times (via Reuters), Vivendi will gain new managerial powers over Activision Blizzard tomorrow, the closing date of the 2007 Activision/Vivendi merger. The merger gave Vivendi a 61-percent stake in Activision.

Speaking with Joystiq, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter describes a potential scenario in which Vivendi can now take out a massive loan in Activision’s name and then pay itself an equally sizable dividend. “Borrowing of $5 billion would permit a dividend of $8.5 billion,” Pachter states. “As the holder of 61 percent of Activision’s common stock at March 31, 2013, we estimate Vivendi would receive approximately $5.2 billion in cash, easing its mounting debt concerns.” The move would leave Activision with a mountain of debt to overcome, while Vivendi uses the payoff to get its own finances in order.

(Click the link to the Game Informer article for some worrying analysis.)

I was at a wedding last weekend, and so I’ve been slowly working through my reader feeds while also raiding, working, and so on. As such, I just read this article yesterday, and it immediately dawned on me that perhaps the reason we’re seeing all of the datamining of these new microtransaction items isn’t because it’s simply a way to “give the fans an option they are asking for,” but might actually be the fastest way for Blizzard to contribute to a general buffering of what could possibly be a massive financial hardship imposed upon Activision Blizzard. Remember, Blizzard is a subsidiary of Vivendi – they don’t stand alone, or just stand with Activision. The economic reality is that they are part of a conglomerate that focuses on profit, and a quick Google search will show you that certain other sectors of Vivendi’s business – particularly the mobile business – are struggling in this regard for multiple reasons, and have been for a little while now.

Ultimately, as a gamer, you hope that the game you play can continue to be fun, and in a situation like WoW, the best way for Blizzard to make money has been the subscription to a great, ever-evolving game, the fees for character services, and so on. However, perhaps that isn’t (or won’t be, very soon) enough anymore. If this is indeed the situation, hopefully Activision Blizzard can weather the fallout and continue to produce interesting, challenging, entertaining games and expansions while remaining profitable, and doing so in a way that doesn’t affect the integrity of gameplay.

In light of this, I’ll be interested to see what the next few financial reports contain, not because subscription numbers specifically mean anything to me, but because I want to see if there is indeed any mention of Vivendi issues and their impact on Activision Blizzard’s financial situation.

…

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Epic weapons can be a funny thing. A ‘hit-or-miss’ thing, rather, when it comes to drop rate (among other things… yes, bad bad joke).

So I have to say that I feel pretty lucky to “finally” have gotten the Shattered Tortoiseshell Longbow from Tortos last night. It was my sixth kill, which means that with bonus rolls it was my eleventh and twelfth chance to get the bow. As usual, his corpse had non-hunter gear on it, but the bonus roll was finally the jackpot.

Of course, the thing looks terrible. Thank goodness for transmogrification. But seriously… it looks like it was made at the Thunder Forge, wrought of rock and stone and a shattered tortoise shell, and some other weird crap. It doesn’t look like something that you would hold at arms-length for several minutes while shooting. But I’ve generally been unhappy with the way almost all of the hunter gear has looked since, oh, I dunno… the beginning of Cataclysm. So no surprise there.

Like I said, transmog. At least Arathar, the Eye of Flame (Ragnaros) is proving to remain useful well more than a year after it stopped being so from a DPS standpoint. A true legendary, even if only in my heart!

The other thing that is so ridiculous about this bow is the gobs of expertise it has on it. At this point, shooting just about anything in the game is like shooting at a porta-pot from inside the porta-pot. Managing it was frustrating before; now, though, it’s just hilarious, because while this was a big upgrade over the LFR Durumu “crossbow,” the stat budget – over 900 hit, over 1000 expertise – is just so unnecessary that one might feel that his/her only options were to a) get even more frustrated or angry, or b) resign one’s self and start chuckling*, because the situation with hit and expertise is just getting stupid at this point.

However, I was prepared: checking out some other hunters that have progressed further than I have recently, I realized that this is the way of the world for the time being, and there’s really nothing that I or anyone else can do about it.

So, I’m not complaining. I’ll take the upgrade!

…

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